The Crucified Mind, in human language, is the mind of God. Such is the mind the Christian prays to, the mind we hear from, the thought of the God who speaks to us in the darkness where he finds us. Such is the God, “who walks the dark hills to show us the way". If we would 'know God' we must know him as the one who is hidden in suffering and revealed in suffering.

However, this is not a suffering of our choosing. We are not called to embrace morbidity and self-flagellation. We are called to embrace God in his suffering, for this is all we may bear. What first crucifies us is his Word to us, the call to behold him crucified and in place of ourselves. His crucifixion is our death to self, that is, if we believe his death is for us. Our believing is our seeing and in seeing we are changed into his image. Truly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right in saying, "the image of God is Christ crucified".

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Philippians 2.5-8

Before you adamantly object to the idea of God having a "crucified mind", ask yourself why your concerned with the idea in the first place? Is it for love of God or love of self that the cross offends? Is it fear of sin and God that we are repulsed? Or is it fear of mere consequences, of being embarrassed by our Lord as he submits to our will and enmity toward him? Are we afraid to worship a God so weak and foolish as to save us through his own crucifixion, cursed for being hung on a tree?

As inspiration says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith." Galatians 3.13,14

It seems to me a very easy and convenient theology that we can summarily surmise sin does nothing to God, or that this should have little or no effect on the way I also think about sin. Today we often encounter a man-centered theology in the Christian market place where truth is sold but grace is cheap. It is a theology so-called, a faith and practice that puts our happiness and our problems at the center of our consciousness in place of a knowledge and glory of God.

Is God so "impassable", to use theo-speak, so removed from emotion that he feels nothing? Cannot God be moved within himself, not merely by my suffering, as painful as that aid, but of his own? We are forced to ask, “in what sense was I created in the image of God? In what sense am I called back to that image from which I’ve changed? What is the likeness or image of God I am called to if it is not one that is willing to suffer in bearing with the sin of others?

In short, if God cannot suffer, who is he on the cross and is he just in calling me to suffer for his sake? Why then should I “take up my cross and follow him" as he asked me to?

I answer the question with a YES! Yes, God does suffer and I am one who causes it.

Perhaps such thinking runs the risk of empowering sinners over God, giving them joy, as it does the devil, in punishing God for their own losses. Of course! That's exactly the point. God does indeed endure the abuse of his enemies. How can we read the cross story any other way? The Son of God, fully God, fully man, suffered in the flesh at the hands of his enemies, submitting to their control.

I suspect one reason such theology is so repulsive to many is the fear it invokes in us, as it did in the disciples. We, like them, are tempted, more than tempted, to forsake him in the garden of prayer because we feel abandoned by the one we supposed was going to deliver "the people of God". We are embarrassed by his weakness and our fear in seeing the Son of Man, our Lord, bound, abused, interrogated at a human tribunal, then executed as a criminal. What hope is there for us? If God allowed this to be done to the Green Tree what will become of us, the dry ones?

It is this inability of the human heart to grasp the humility of divine power and how it works that feeds our unbelief. Blind to the way of God with men, we go astray, like sheep, each to his own way, ambling and munching our way to the precipice of despair.

Where would we be without the Suffering Servant, the Shepherd of our souls, who seeks the lost amid all pain and dangers of the wilderness?

Thank God he is willing and able to suffer all the abuse humanity heaps on him. I find this is the true glory of God, something I can only know by faith in his cross.

How then should I respond when I hear the voice of One with a crucified mind?

In faith alone. That is the only right response to such an unreasonable request, such a hard call to die that we might live. It is by beholding Him that I am changed into his image. It is in seeing my work with the hammer and nails, it is in seeing his work of submitting to it in my place that my own heart is changed from stone to wax.

Seeing Jesus is seeing Love with skin on it, the divine love I long for, the divine love he supplies through the spilling of his blood for me.

What must we do? Look and live!

For, "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." John 3.14